The present volume is the result of a team research which gathered biblical scholars, philologists, and historians of religions, on the issue of the multiple «Interpretations of Moses inherited from the ancient mediterranean cultures. The concrete outcome of this comparative inquiry is the common translation and commentary of the fragments from the works of the mysterious Artapanus. The comparative perspective suggested here is not so much methodological, or thematic. It is first of all an invitation to cross disciplinary boundaries and to take account of the contributions of diverse cultures to the formation of a single mythology, in the case, a Moses mythology. With respect to Judea, Greece, Egypt or Rome, and further more an emerging christianity and its «gnostic counterpart, the figure of Moses is at the heart of a cross-cultural dialogue the pieces of which, if they can be seperated for the confort of their specific study, mostly gain by being put together.

Ranging from Sumer to ISIS, this collection presents an historic and anthropological approach to the beard in Middle Eastern religious traditions. The twelve contributions, along with a general introduction, cover the ancient Near East (Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Hittites), Judaism, and medieval to contemporary Islam. Since Antiquity the beard has been a symbol of masculine power, linked directly to ideologies of the male body. Whether the wearing of a beard is compulsory or prohibited, encouraged or mocked, it is a fundamental marker of identity and ideology, particularly in the Islamic world. The essays in Barbe et barbus are an elegant demonstration of the complexities inherent in the pilosity of the masculine visage.